Author: The Conservative Woman

IN the midst of the noise and fury over the recent Scottish judges’ ruling on the Prime Minister’s prorogation of Parliament – that it was illegal – news of the High Court of Northern Ireland ruling that a no-deal Brexit poses no threat to the Good Friday Agreement has passed all but unnoticed.

But yes, the High Court in Belfast has dismissed claims that a no-deal Brexit and the imposition of a hard border would damage the Northern Ireland peace process.

Delivering his judgment, the judge said: ‘Virtually all of the assembled evidence belongs to the world of politics, both national and supra-national.

‘Within the world of politics, the well-recognised phenomena of claim and counter-claim, assertion and counter-assertion, allegation and denial, blow and counter-blow, alteration and modification of government policy, public statements, unpublished deliberations, posturing, strategy and tactics are the very essence of what is both countenanced and permitted in a democratic society.’

This dismissal, which follows the reasoning of the earlier London High Court ruling which found Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament for five weeks to be lawful, leaves the Scottish judges’ impartiality ever more open to question.

THIS is your chance to reckon the political odds. With Boris ‘snookered’ by the Remainers, as the Telegraph’s Sherelle Jacobs puts it, and the near-certainty there’s to be no election before October 31, what are the chances of our leaving the EU on any terms by that date?

Could Boris – if he hasn’t resigned by then – still pull a rabbit out of the EU hat and if he can, will the Commons accept a WA rehash? Could we still leave with a no-deal?

MPs might think that they have stymied a no-deal exit once and for all, but it is not really in their hands. What are the chances that Boris’s request for an extension – should he surrender and make it – be agreed by the EU? Will Macron say enough is enough, good riddance to bad rubbish, refuse to agree to an extension as he has threatened previously, and prevail with the rest of the EU?

These are all factors to consider in your prediction about our country’s future as of October 31.

But that was not the reason she alerted me. It was this sentence that caught her eye: ‘The Tories who think the Brexit Party will go quietly once we have left the EU should read a recent post on Conservative Woman website by John Longworth Brexit Party MEP and chairman of the Leave Means Leave pressure group.’

It’s good to see that we have influence even in the strangest of places!

You can read Heffer’s interesting article on Cummings and why calling an election could prove a very high risk strategy for the Tories – one that Labour has since made evident it believes to be a similarly high risk – here.

Most people believe that 2016 referendum result should be respected ‘irrespective of how I voted’ (54 per cent agree, 25 per cent disagree);
Of those who voted Remain in 2016, more than a third (35 per cent) said they wanted Brexit to be delivered;
Asked whether Brexit should be postponed until January 31, 2020, almost half (49 per cent) disagreed compared with 29 per cent who agreed;
By 43 per cent to 32 per cent, those surveyed agreed that if the EU refuses to make any more concessions, the UK should leave the EU without a deal on October 31;
When asked if it was ‘fundamentally undemocratic’ for some MPs to try to prevent the UK from leaving the EU in light of the Government’s promise to implement the referendum result, 50 per cent agreed and 26 per cent disagreed.

IF anyone knows what Labour’s position on Brexit, please tell shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry. On the BBC’s Question Time she said she would try to get a better deal from the EU, then she would campaign in a referendum to Remain.

Fellow panellist Iain Dale chortled: ‘Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds to everybody else? You think people are going to vote for you on that basis? Have you no shame?’

You can read a report here and watch the section of the broadcast here.

It’s been an honour to represent Orpington for 9 years & to serve as a minister under three PMs. In recent weeks I’ve been torn between family loyalty and the national interest – it’s an unresolvable tension & time for others to take on my roles as MP & Minister. #overandout

What a chasm, what a gulf of difference between 3 September 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany after their invasion of Poland, and 3 September 2019, when MPs effectively declared war on their own government and sought a surrender to the EU.

However, we can also remember the date of the ending of the Battle of Britain, 31 October 1940. Perhaps, suitably and fittingly, the Battle of Brexit could still end on 31 October . . .

Cynthia wood replied:

Agree about end of Brexit on October 31. It is Nemesis day for all and what happens, or does not happen, on that fateful day will control British politics for another decade. BJ’s total commitment to it, again at the despatch box yesterday, and now the commitment of a purged Tory party, not to mention TBP and the expectations of the growingly aroused British public all move inexorably to that date.

Granted, what happens now and in between will be most interesting.

wiggiatlarge wrote:

Judging by the smirk on Theresa May’s face during all this she would have loved to have crossed the floor of the house and joined them, after all her rhetoric was just that rhetoric, she never had any intention of leaving the EU in a meaningful way, in the real world she would have been sacked for incompetence.

B1956 wrote:

A cull of Tories, but will they be replaced by conservatives, I wonder?

Scaroth wrote:

Boris wields the butcher’s knife for a second time.

Meanwhile the Labour Party – the official Opposition – is seemingly more interested in taking No Deal off the table than taking over the government.

Really don’t want to let us have a say, do they?

My guess is this has been worked out in advance by Cummings and Boris, so as to maximise anger against the treacherous MPs who clearly now serve a foreign power. There’s a word for that.

Dacorum wrote:

As Michael Howard said on Radio 4 today, Boris had no choice but to remove the whip and expel the pro-EU rebels because if there was a General Election and he won a majority, the same rebels would oppose him and therefore threaten his majority. They therefore had to be kicked out. That is the hard political reason but I’m delighted they have been kicked out as I don’t regard those who are pro EU and wish to be governed by the EU are conservatives in any sense of the word.

Michael Howard could also have said that, if they had been allowed to stand, the public could not be certain what the Conservative Party was campaigning for in the election which would cost them the votes of countless Leavers.

Steve Sidaway 6 hours ago

Wonderful! 21 fewer Fake Tories who can either stand as Independents and be obliterated, or join the Lib-Dums – and be obliterated . . .

Poliorketes wrote:

This is excellent news. The hardline Remainers in the party played right into Johnson’s hand, and by showing when he makes a threat he follows through is no bad thing for the discipline of those remaining in the party.

I notice quite a few of the usual suspects – Djanogly, Spelman, Alan Duncan – balked. Nor were there resignations from the likes of Rudd or Morgan, so that’s their Remainer credentials blackened.

Those sacked were never going to vote for any genuine Brexit, no matter what disingenuous lies they told about how they were opposed only to no-deal. The likes of Gauke knew the crap deal accepted by May wasn’t leaving the EU, but a holding pattern to allow the UK to rejoin after 2020.

Hammond et al were outplayed, and this is only the first move of the game. They’ll find Johnson a rather different opponent to May.

John Birch wrote:

It’s odd that in parliament a majority counts as a win, but not apparently in a referendum.

RUTH Davidson has resigned as leader of the Scottish Conservatives after eight years.

She has been widely credited with turning around the fortunes of the Tories in Scotland, but backed opponents of Boris Johnson in the Conservative leadership race and has said she could not support a no-deal Brexit.

THERE can perhaps be no more fitting tribute to the great campaigning journalist and sceptic Christopher Booker who died this summer than the repeated publication of his work. Right to the end of his long and distinguished career he kept his finger on the pulse of social change and mass media manipulation. Last year he wrote a seminal report on the climate change debate for the Global Warming Policy Foundation. It was titled Global Warming: A case study in groupthink.

In it he demonstrates how both the science and policy of the climate debate are shaped and driven by an almost flawless example of classical groupthink. A film setting out the broad argument can be viewed here:

IN the publicity lull while Greta Thunberg is on the high seas on her way to the US, here is the question no one seems to be asking: Is she the victim of child abuse?

Her mother, a successful opera singer, has revealed in a book that Greta was very disturbed while growing up. She had panic attacks, anxiety and depression. At 11 she went two months without eating. Her heart rate and blood pressure showed clear signs of starvation (as a result she is very small for 16). She stopped speaking to anyone but her parents and younger sister, Beata, who also has significant emotional challenges.

At this point Greta was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, high-functioning autism, selective mutism and OCD.

The question of whether the correct adult reaction was to encourage her to play truant (not from a mainstream school, but one for children with special needs) and collude in turning her into a latter-day Joan of Arc has already been raised. Her mother’s insistence that Greta can physically see carbon dioxide is worrying, and at the least suggests her judgement as a parent is deeply compromised. (Greta’s father, Svante, has given up his work as an actor to devote himself to managing her career.)

Another article, in Standpoint, produces evidence that Greta is being shamelessly used by a cabal of green lobbyists, PR hustlers, eco-academics, and companies preparing for the biggest bonanza of government contracts in history: the greening of the Western economies. Writer Dominic Green says: ‘Greta, whether she and her parents know it or not, is the face of their political strategy.’

Taken together the two articles make an irresistible case that a rather unfortunate and vulnerable child has been groomed by adults into playing a part. Her very vulnerability makes her a gift from the gods for the green lobby – you can’t criticise her without seeming like a heel. (Though it has never been necessary to fawn on her in the style of Michael Gove.)

But she won’t be a child for ever. What happens when she reaches 21 or 25? Will she become fair game? Will she be mocked and denounced? How will she cope then? The prognosis cannot be good.

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